Articles tagged with: jobs

It was, as usual, a busy week here at First Arkansas News. We learned about the perils of moving a yard in Arkansas, innovation in the Natural State, discussed Wal-Mart and its “buy American/hire veterans” initiative the fact that bulletin board systems (BBS) are still alive although the Internet made dialing into local services obsolete, etc. It would be a tragedy if our tens of fans missed a single thing that was posted in the past week. To avoid such unspeakable tragedy, then, we’ve made it easy to catch up on …

It’s no secret that the economy may be recovering but people are wondering where the jobs are. According to the Arkansas Department of Workforce services, the unemployment rate here in the Natural State was 7.1 percent in April — an improvement over 7.3 percent in the same month a year ago. Here’s something to keep in mind, however — the Department of Workforce Service reported there were 1.236 million Arkansans working in April, down from 1.263 million jobs reported a year ago. How did unemployment decline even though fewer people were …

KATV-7 — the ABC affiliate in Little Rock — reported today that Bentonville-based Walmart Stores Inc. has pledged to buy $50 billion in goods made or grown in America over the next 10. Wal-Mart also plans to train and provide jobs to 100,000 recently-discharged veterans over the next five years. Here’s the odd thing — Reuters reported Walmart made those announcements back in January. So, the question must be asked — is KATV just six months behind in its news coverage? Absolutely not. In fact, one could argue that there can’t be …

On Tuesday, Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe held a meeting at the Bauxite Community Center that Saint-Gobain, a French Company, will invest in a $100 million facility in Bauxite that will create 140 jobs in Saline County. Saint-Gobain already has a facility in Bauxite that supplies material for its ceramic manufacturing process. The products at issue are called proppants — small, spherical ceramic beads used in natural gas fracture mining. The main component in proppants is bauxite, which is available in abundance in Saline County. Why is the announcement significant? Frankly, Saline County …

Remember those “look for the Union label” commercials back in the 1970s and early 1980s? The group responsible for those ads was the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) as an attempt to bring attention to a phenomenon that was a clear threat to the loss of jobs in that industry — cheap labor available in the third world. So, let’s see if this sounds familiar to anyone — companies were talking about expensive labor, protecting their bottom lines, cutting costs in orders to compete, etc. We all know what happened …

MAUMELLE— More than 300 jobs in the Central Arkansas area will be created when the Little Rock-based Dillard’s Inc. opens a new Internet fulfillment center in Maumelle. Dillard’s Inc. already employs approximately 2,300 people in Arkansas. According to a press release from the company, continuing growth of the online store www.dillards.com makes the new fulfillment center necessary. It will be located in a former Target distribution facility and is expected to be fully operational in 2012. The 850,000-square-foot former Target distribution center was constructed in 1980 and expanded in 1990. Dillard’s President …

Things have been going well here at First Arkansas News since the site launched back in April. We’ve got some great reporters submitting articles and now average around 3,500 unique hits per week. Furthermore, there are more than a few regulars who stop in to read articles regularly and the growth in the number of people subscribing to the site through email and the RSS feed has been impressive when one considers the site is less than a year old. The only area that has been disappointing has to do with ads. …

So, let’s see — the economy is a mess, unemployment is high, deficits are higher and we’ve got a bunch of Congressional elections coming up in November. The Democrats are blaming George W. Bush and his economic policies while the Republicans are pointing out that Barack Obama’s administration has swelled deficits to an unsustainable degree and we don’t have a whole lot to show for the spending (or, rather, spending borrowed money). People are irate over the economy for a good reason. According to the Arkansas Department of Workforce Services, the unemployment …